If we want lasting solutions and success it will take time and effort.The reason we keep these guys around and continue to rehire them is simple; we are lazy.Ouch!OK, what I meant was that we are too busy and have such a full plate we really can't find the time to recruit and build the team we want.We would rather continue putting up with the nonsense and endure the negatives than have to invest ourselves in creating the sales team that we really want. If I fire him, who replaces him?There just aren't any good salespeople out there any more. Any more?When were there good salespeople just "out there"?It's the greatest cop-out that we have.Have you ever considered how many people your first manager went through to get you?That great team you were a part of, did it just happen?No, that's not how it worked back then and it doesn't just happen now.Let's stray from the path of least resistance of keeping a poor employee around or re-treading the same old people.If we "bite the bullet" and resist the urge of the quick fix we will see lasting results.To get a tree to bear optimum fruit you have to prune some branches and you have to continue to cultivate, feed and water it.Do you want a group of salespeople you can just throw out there and set them on cruise control so you can sit back and count the deals?If that crew existed, why would they need you, oh dynamic manager?

Here's the bottom line:Salespeople will do what we train, manage and hold them accountable to.Let's deal with the discomfort of pruning and the growing pains of green peas and quality hires to build the team we want, which reflect us and hold to our values.

Lets build an ideal salesperson, shall we? First we must identify the parts of ingredients before we can assemble, program and initiate this selling machine. Most people agree on many of the basic attribute of a top seller. By a University of Florida study by Amanda Ruth and Allan Wysoki citing various expert reports and surveys these are the most common characteristics of superior salespeople: motivation, empathy, ability to think on one's feet, tenacity, high energy, self confidence, hunger/drive, ego, product and customer knowledge, a desire or even a compulsive need to win or hold affection of others. Ok that's quite a bit to require to have jut to hire them. The nice thing a lot of this personality go hand in hand, i.e. motivation and high energy ect. It's a good idea to conduct personality profile on prospective employee. We cannot put too many stock on theseprofiles as they can be manipulated but they can be factored into the decision.

The danger is looking only for the people with the "driver" type personality. You want to round out your team with all types of personalities, recognizing the ideal salesperson does have some of the "driver" tendencies. You can't build the team of all "drivers", you must diversify and have predominately "expressive" and "amiable" personality as they make up almost 70% of society. Pure "driver" are about 18% and the analytical type represent just over 10%. So we should try to hire accordingly recognizing that some desirable traits can be learn and cultivated. Keep in mind, someone who is, for example, high analytical and barely registers on any other personality type will virtually never be a superior seller. We want round pegs for round holes. If the pegs are slightly "out of round" they can be shaped with a reasonable amount of training and instructions. If the pegs are squares you are going to have to invest a significant amount of focused, time and energy to round this one out. Lets be honest we are barely putting in the time to round out the one's with softer edge. So let us not fool ourselves into thinking we're going to "make" a "salesperson".

To be continued....

Written by: Brad Alexander

Contact us for more information on Brad Alexander's book, "The Paint Won't Lick Itself: Simple Truths For Selling Cars".